That seed of dread returned, sprouting and sending out sickening tendrils into my chest.
“Your species is a disease,” the Mother finally said.
My lips parted, my heart suddenly hammering in my chest.
“The Nejerets are a product of my children’s ineptitude. Yours was Re and Apep’s first universe, and when they started to lose control of it, they were too ashamed of failing to return to me and ask for help. Unfortunately, their failure resulted in the creation of a race of abominations—you and the rest of your kind. To save your sickly universe, we must eradicate the disease.”
My mind struggled to process what she was saying. Eradicate the disease? Did she mean . . .
Ever so slowly, I shook my head. I couldn’t help it.
She couldn’t possibly mean . . .
“We must kill all of the Nejerets,” she said.
19
. . . kill all of the Nejerets . . .
The Mother of All was still talking, but I could no longer hear her. Her words were drowned out by the sound of the blood rushing in my ears. By the rasp and whoosh of air flowing in and out of my lungs. By the thud-thump thud-thump of my heart, breaking in my chest.
I no longer saw the High Council seated before me. The Mother of All faded out of sight. I was lost in my mind’s eye, watching a carousel of all the people I loved. Of all the Nejerets who would soon be dead, sent into Aaru until the end of time. Nik and Lex and Heru and Aset. Mari and Mei. Poor Garth, who’d had the bad luck to have been transformed into a Nejeret barely a month ago. Little Reni and Bobby . . .
“Do not ignore me!” I vaguely heard the Mother of All exclaim.
But I couldn’t help it. I was spinning, my thoughts out of control. Would the Nejeret children like Reni and Bobby grow up in the blink between the world of the living and the world of the dead? Or would they be damned to an eternity as children? What about Susie and Syris, who were Nejeret by birth but Netjer by nature?
“What is wrong with her?” the Netjer spokeswoman asked, her voice just tickling the edges of my awareness.
What about me? If the Mother executed me now—here—would my ba be able to join my loved ones in Aaru? Or would my soul be trapped in this universe for all time? Or would she consume the energy from my soul, ending my existence by making me a part of her? That would be true hell . . .
“I think I can help,” someone said, his voice like a dream in this new, horrifying reality.
Most disturbing of all—when the Mother decided that the soul-energy in my universe was ripe and ready for harvesting, my people would be worse than dead. My gut told me that Aaru and everyone in it would be sucked into the abyss that had been swallowing Seattle in the echo-dream. It would be as though they’d never existed at all.
Someone was saying my name, but I couldn’t shake off the fog of despair. Of horror. What the Mother of All was proposing—demanding—was unimaginable, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Images of my friends and family being hunted down and slaughtered cluttered my thoughts like mental graffiti. I didn’t want to imagine those things, all of the horrifying ways my loved ones might be murdered, but I couldn’t stop.
The evacuation order in the echo-dream had applied to cities associated with Nejerets. Was this—the Netjers sent to kill my people—the threat that everyone had been running from? The destruction had been nightmarishly brutal. Was this the spark that would set my world aflame?
Whatever the Mother and High Council claimed, they weren’t civilized or merciful. They were savage, bloodthirsty beasts. They were monsters.
“Kat,” someone said from right in front of me, the voice cutting through my panicked thoughts. Hands gripped my upper arms. “Kat!” the person repeated, giving me a sharp shake. That voice—if I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn it belonged to Nik. “Look at me!” he demanded.
I blinked, head hanging and chest rising and falling with each gasping breath, and focused on the man standing before me.
It was Nik. He was here, and his face was the most wonderfully perfect thing I’d ever seen in my entire life.
I blinked again, and his features altered, elongating and sharpening. His eye color shifted from pale blue to opalescent white.
It wasn’t Nik after all. It was Re. Had he temporarily put on his Nik mask to get through to me, or had it all been a figment of my imagination? Was I so out of it that I’d seen what I wanted to see, not what was actually right in front of me? Was I truly losing my mind?
My chin trembled, and tears leaked over the brims of my eyelids.
Re leaned in, bringing his face mere inches from mine. “Get your shit together, Kitty Kat,” he said, his voice barely audible even to my hypersensitive ears.
His words stunned me, and my eyes widened. They were so Nik-like, and not a bit like anything I’d ever heard Re say.
Re blinked, his irises flashing to pale blue. When he blinked again, they were back to that iridescent moonstone shade, but I knew what I’d seen.
My brows drew together. Had they done it? Had they made the reverse possession work? Was it possible that Nik was really here—not physically, but in spirit?
“Nik?” I whispered, not ready to let myself believe what I desperately hoped was true.
The corner of his mouth twitched, and I could almost see Nik’s pierced lip superimposed over Re’s. Because I wasn’t just looking at Re; Nik was in there too. I didn’t know how they’d made it happen, and I honestly didn’t care. Somehow, Nik was in Re’s head, just as Re had been in his for so long. I could feel my withdrawal headache slowly lessening, like a vise easing around my skull, which meant Nik’s soul really was here, at least in part.
“Thank you, Re,” the Mother of All said. She didn’t sound all that grateful—pissed off was more like it. “Your assistance has been noted. You may move aside now.”
Nik-Re winked at me, and once again it was as though Nik’s features were superimposed over Re’s. His eyebrow ring glinted, there one second, gone the next.
I loved being able to see him, even in such an insubstantial way; I just hoped it was courtesy of our soul bond and that nobody else would be able to detect Nik’s presence too. Especially not the Mother of All.
Nik-Re stepped away, moving off to the side to stand beside Anapa.
I watched him go, my soul longing to follow.
“What say you, Katarina Dubois?” the Mother of All said. “Your universe has been spared. Are you not overjoyed by our mercy?”
I choked on a brittle laugh. I couldn’t risk opening my mouth; I was too afraid that whatever I said would make the situation even worse, because there was no way my words wouldn’t anger the Mother further. My fists were squeezed so tight that my fingernails were gouging the skin of my palms. Anything to retain at least some small semblance of control over myself. I focused on my breathing, drawing on some of Dom’s old-school meditation techniques to keep my cool.
The Mother of All narrowed her eyes. Looked like my act wasn’t exactly cutting it. “You will remain here, in your quarters. We will alert you when the cleansing is complete.”
“Cleansing,” I muttered, bitterness curdling the word on my tongue. I stared at the floor in front of me. What a crock of shit.
“What was that?” the Mother said.
I raised my gaze to meet hers and licked my lips. “Nothing, I just . . .” Think, damn it! “What about the twins?” I asked. Maybe if I could find them, we could band together and do something. With Re firmly on our side and the twins’ help, maybe we would be able to at least break out of here and get back to our own universe. Anapa’s plan would take too damn long; getting back there and freeing Isfet was our only hope, now. “What will happen to Susie and Syris?” I clarified.
The Mother of All sniffed, pretty, gemstone features twisted in disgust. “Those bastard Netjers were even more of an abomination that your filthy species.”
Were? My heart turned leaden, sinking into my belly. What did she mean by were
?
“I’ve already sent them home,” she said. “They’ll be reunited with their dear parents soon enough.”
My brow furrowed. “You sent them home?” Something about what she was saying wasn’t clicking in my mind. Why would she set them free?
“Yes,” the Mother said, a small, cruel smile curving her lips. “I sent them home . . . to Aaru.”
20
“Did you know?” I raged, snatching a full bottle of booze off the dresser and chucking it at Anapa. “Did you fucking know?”
Anapa ducked, and the bottle smashed into the wall behind the armchair, shattering into a sloppy mess of bourbon and glass shards.
Nik-Re, fully wearing his Nik mask now, stepped away from the wall-without-a-door. I caught his movement in my peripheral vision. “Kat—”
I whipped my arm out toward him. “Stay out of it,” I ordered.
Wisely, he stepped back, his only act of defiance raising that damn pierced eyebrow. He leaned his shoulder blades against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest.
Of all the terrible news I’d received in the past few minutes, the fact that Susie and Syris were dead and trapped in Aaru for all eternity was the one I clung to. It was the most solid. The most real. The easiest thing to be pissed off about. I channeled all of my anger into that awful truth.
“Katarina, please,” Anapa said, hands raised and head ducked. “I swear I did not know what happened to them. I believed them to be imprisoned, awaiting the Mother’s decision in this matter. I had no idea that—”
“That they were dead?” I finished for him. “That the—” I searched and searched for the right word to embody just how awful the Mother of All was, but I came up empty. She was too evil for words. “That the Mother had them executed just to get them out of her way?”
Anapa lowered his arms, his shoulders slumping.
“They were just kids, Anapa.” My eyes stung, more in outrage than in sorrow, but the sorrow was there, too, deep and aching. Susie and Syris were Lex and Heru’s kids, to be exact. I used to watch them for Heru when they were babies, back before Lex had returned to us. “They’ve barely lived,” I said, voice trembling, “and now . . .” I bowed my head, eyelids sliding shut. “Now they never will.”
“I know, Katarina,” Anapa said. “I was one of their teachers.”
I opened my eyes and looked at him, surprised by that little bit of information.
“They were some of the cleverest, kindest young Netjers I have ever had the pleasure of training,” he continued. “Trust me when I say that their loss hurts me deeply.”
I exhaled shakily, fighting back tears. It both helped and made it worse to know that he could empathize, that this pain wasn’t mine alone. “Do you know how it happened?” I asked, voice thready. “How did they—” I couldn’t bring myself to say die.
“Nothing so gruesome as what you are thinking,” Anapa said, easing his way across the room toward me. “As full-fledged energy beings, they had no need to preserve their physical forms. They were not ‘killed’ in the conventional sense. They would have been subdued into unconsciousness and brought to the edge of Aaru. Once there, Aaru would have pulled them in.”
As he described their fate, I pictured it in my mind.
Anapa reached me, raising one hand and resting it on my shoulder. “They are not dead, Katarina. Energy beings can only die by the Mother’s hand, and she did not consume their energy. She sent them away, instead. But they are trapped in Aaru, and there they will remain until the end of time.”
I laughed bitterly. “At which point the Mother will suck the universe dry, and Susie and Syris and everyone else stuck in Aaru will cease to be.”
“Yes, well . . .” Anapa smiled sadly. “There is no such thing as forever.”
Because of the Mother of All. Because every universe save for hers—this one—existed solely on her whim. I stood a little straighter, stare hardening. “But there could be. We could make forever a real thing.”
Anapa returned my stare, his expression unreadable.
“We had a plan,” I said. “And a good one. We can still go for it . . . maybe with a few tweaks. We just have to step up our timeline a bit.” I looked from Anapa to Nik-Re and back. “I mean, now it’s even more urgent than ever, right?”
Anapa’s eyes searched mine, and he nodded, slowly.
“The Mother didn’t say they would start killing Nejerets immediately, so we may still have some time.” I flicked my hand in Nik-Re’s direction. “And with Nik here in spirit, the bonding withdrawals are lessening.” Really damn slowly, but at least it was getting better. “That’ll make me stronger. If I can get a handle on tapping into the Essence, then I can portal back to my universe, free Isfet, and return with her. Then”—I smacked my fist against my palm—“the Mother’s going down.”
I raised my eyebrows for emphasis. “I think the Mother imprisoned Isfet because she fears her power. She imprisons all of the universal consciousnesses because she’s afraid of them. Because if they were free, there’s no way in hell they would let her snack on their energy, let alone suck them dry.”
Now, Nik-Re was nodding, too.
“And I think the Mother is afraid of me, too, because I have the power to release one of the few beings in existence who can challenge her. That’s why she’s holding me here while her Netjer assassins do her dirty work—because the most dangerous place she can send me is to Aaru.” I paused, taking a play from the Mother’s own handbook for dramatic effect. “What do you say we make her worst fears a reality?”
21
“. . . so they have to hide,” I told Dom. “I don’t know for how long. Who knows if the Netjers will ever give up—maybe not until the Mother is out of the picture. Maybe not even then . . .”
I was sitting on the floor in front of the standing mirror, one hand pressed against the glass-turned-At, the other against the wall, connecting me to the Essence. Nik was sitting beside me, a silent, supportive spectator. It was so strange to see him now possessing Re, just as Re had done to him for thousands of years. The tables had turned, spiritually speaking. I was just glad that they’d turned in my favor for once.
“Tell them to pack only what they need and to go, now,” I told Dom. “Avoid cities. Nowhere openly associated with our people.” I’d already given him a flash recap of all that had happened here, and he was fully aware of our people’s fate. Hiding wouldn’t protect them from the Netjers forever, but it would give them some more time. Which meant it would give me some more time—just like Nik’s spiritual presence was feeding the soul-bond ever so slowly, adding time to the withdrawal meter—and more time was the thing I needed most right now.
“I understand,” Dom said.
A portion of the dream-echo replayed in my mind. “And alert the human authorities,” I added. “They need to evacuate all cities associated with our people. The Netjers are going for total genocide here, and they aren’t going to be too picky about which kind of humanoid they slaughter.”
I closed my eyes, clenching my jaw against the raw, alien energy singeing my soul. It grew more painful with each heartbeat, edging ever closer to unbearable. This was my longest session yet, and I’d connected to the Essence fairly easily. It was the holding on part that remained as hard as ever.
Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes, and I sensed that I had only a matter of seconds before the power slipped away from me, chased off my body’s own self-preservation defense mechanisms. You know, the kind that listen to survival instinct over kamikaze tendencies. “And don’t tell me where they go,” I said to Dom in a rush. “No matter what, don’t tell me. Who knows if she has some way to compel me to tell her what I know.”
“I understand,” Dom said again. “Should I—”
But I couldn’t hold on any longer. The threads of At and anti-At snapped back into my hand, retreating into my ba, and my connection to the wild Essence was severed. I would have to send the rest of my directions through Nik when he even
tually withdrew from Re and returned to his own body a universe away.
A wave of dizziness crashed over me. “Whoa,” I said, hand to my forehead and eyes shutting to block out the spinning room.
It didn’t help that the bonding-withdrawal headache was still there, lessened but working in concert with the temporary vertigo to make me feel oh so dandy.
“What is it?” Nik asked, fingers curling around my arm to steady me.
It was just the two of us now; Anapa had left a few minutes ago, heading off to search for more information about the “cleansing” that would wipe out every Nejeret life from my universe. We needed to know when it was going to start. I was already operating in high gear, but I could always push harder. There was always overdrive.
“Dizzy,” I whispered. “So, so dizzy . . .”
“Here,” Nik said, putting some pressure on my arm and pulling me backward. “Lie down.” Once I was settled on my side in the fetal position, he let go of my arm. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
I cracked one eyelid open and watched him retreat into the bathroom. He grabbed the hand towel from the rack on the wall and turned on the faucet, wetting the towel, then wringing it out. When he returned, he settled on the floor once more, one knee upraised, and gently placed the damp terrycloth on my forehead. It was cool and refreshing, giving me something to focus on besides the discomfort in my head.
I sighed, blindly reaching out for his hand. My fingers fumbled around for a few seconds until Nik placed his borrowed hand in mine, lacing our fingers together.
“Thanks,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze. The ache in the base of my skull seemed to ease slightly, and my shoulders relaxed, releasing some of the stored-up tension. It was better when we were touching. Not all the way better, but not as bad, either.
“How’s your headache?” Nik asked.
I frowned, eyes still shut. “On a scale of one to ten, I’d place it at a five or six. Not bad enough to knock me on my ass, but still distracting.” That frown turned upside down, and I opened my eyes, gazing up at Nik. “It’s better now that you’re here, though. I wish you could stay.”
Judgement (Kat Dubois Chronicles Book 5) Page 11
